How to Sell to Banks and Lenders | Tiffany Stringfellow (Moody's Analytics)

Carter (00:01.728)
Hey Tiffany, give the people a quick intro. Who are you and what do you do?

Tiffany Stringfellow (00:07.239)
Thanks, Carter. Tiffany Stringfellow. I have been in the mortgage industry for about 20 years now and done a little bit of everything with a number of different vendors, always focused on lending either on the capital market side or on the origination side. And today I work for Moody's and specifically I'm a workflow specialist supporting our automated property condition report.

which is primarily used in home equity lending or in capital markets as they acquire loans.

Carter (00:43.938)
When you first get in front of a lender, what usually makes them take the conversation seriously? What pain is strong enough that they'll consider change to you guys?

Tiffany Stringfellow (00:53.503)
Yeah, I mean it it's a it's a little different with everybody, but I think what kind of resonates or what I what I try to do with with clients when I meet with them is before I even launch into a discussion is just try to understand a little bit about their initiatives and not just the person, like not just you, Carter, but your company, your department. but in my product space, it really boils down to a kind of a handful of things. if I'm talking to somebody on the home equity side.

It's reducing cycle time. Highly competitive in-home equity fintechs are very quick at this process. Banks and credit unions tend to be a little bit of a longer underwriting process. And so that's a big initiative. And often that translates to pull-through for them, which is obviously higher profitability. Hard cost is a big savings. We don't have to deploy a person. It's all done automatically through aerial imagery.

And so it's a fourth of the cost of an appraisal. But the big mover for somebody to really pay attention is going to be can we make the cycle time quicker and can we help them gain clients or members?

Carter (02:06.804)
Okay. And is that generally always the same? Like you by this point you've talked to so many of these lenders, it's generally gonna be the same type of thing for each person, or is there a wide range of stuff? Or really cycle time, you hit on that and that is usually what is gonna make them interested.

Tiffany Stringfellow (02:23.514)
I mean I I think if if cycle time isn't at least part of a desire

It's it's it's a harder discussion around making the move, right? So there's so many things that go into making a change to any AI, but particularly in the appraisal kind of space, that we're novel. I mean, no one's really doing this in this space but us. And so having the discussion, if they don't have a vested interest in really collapsing that cycle time, the needle mover of just reducing hard cost is

Is usually not as big of a reason to really take me seriously. So that's pretty consistent. I would say the other big piece of it is are they trying to compete? Are they competing with FinTech? Are they a regional credit union that's competing with other credit unions? Obviously, that's a huge competitive edge. If you can get somebody money in their pocket for their home equity right away versus waiting 30 days, you're gonna get a better competitive edge, right? So those that's

That theme is pretty consistent and I do think they need to have a desire to make that kind of change.

Carter (03:36.237)
Okay, that makes sense. You had mentioned that you guys do something very unique. I see it seems like a lot of people in this space are pitching j AI and j I'm sure every every lender has heard some sort of AI pitch. How do you get a lender to see APCR as a must have instead of just another shiny object? And is there a lot of skepticism or is it at this point everybody's fired up about AI so they're trying to move in that in that direction?

Tiffany Stringfellow (04:02.401)
Yeah, I mean, I think AI in general, right? I mean, to your point, I don't think I've talked to anybody in the last six months that doesn't have one or two or six AI strategic initiatives on their roadmap, right? and and everybody's a little hesitant. And we we're working in a heavily regulated space, right? I mean, maybe one of the most regulated. And so I think one thing that really sets us apart in Moody's in general, is Moody's is

Carter (04:13.133)
Hm, yeah.

Tiffany Stringfellow (04:30.345)
We've always been on the forefront of AI. They they deploy so much AI for my use as a salesperson. It it really blows my mind the amount of things I can do to increase my efficiency. But but the kind of the beating the drum of we're gonna move fast, we're gonna be safe. And I think where I'm different in this APCR solution is it allows the lender to have the best of both worlds, right? They can compete with the fintechs, but they can still get conditioned. So your risk isn't being traded for.

Carter (04:32.652)
Mm-hmm.

Tiffany Stringfellow (05:00.459)
speed and I think that's really the key right if you're gonna implement AI we still got to meet regulatory requirements we meet that for home equity we've still got to meet the risk department's thresholds and not having eyes on the property simply wouldn't wouldn't fly right and so this allows them to get both and I think that I think that gives some comfort in what's really uncomfortable as people make this AI change.

Carter (05:27.116)
Yeah, you know, you said something a second ago that Moody's gives you a bunch of access to AI tools. What I'm curious, what type of stuff do you use that's really helpful? 'Cause sometimes you know, I'm not that deep in that world and sometimes I think, is it a lot of hype in the AI world? Is there a lot of things that are really useful? But yeah, what are you using that is that is super like what are you doing? I'm I'm curious about that.

Tiffany Stringfellow (05:47.719)
Yeah, I mean it's it I I'm certainly not the AI expert at Moody's, but I will say like we actually had a contest where people built agents doing various different things and then they kind of was like Shark Tank, right? Like they came on and said, here's this cool AI agent. and so people are doing all kinds of things. We we have an in a integration with Salesforce that allows us to get the information that I'm collecting from my clients and put it in an easy way to consume, right? So

Carter (06:02.083)
Yeah.

Tiffany Stringfellow (06:17.633)
Notes, pulling in things to into opportunities. one of my colleagues built an agent that would allow them to kind of speak and it would transcribe notes and pull out the key elements that go into Salesforce. if I wanted to learn about you, I could pull up information on your company through Sales Recon that would tell me, you know, not just about Rocket specifically, but Carter. What does Carter do, right? Like, have you won an award? Have you like had some background

Carter (06:43.736)
Mm-hmm.

Tiffany Stringfellow (06:47.723)
that maybe is interesting. So I mean it's it's a bunch of little things, but I would say it's saving me a considerable amount of time, even just having Claude and Copilot built in to our system. So the the data access underneath is key. If I wanted to look at contracts or how much are they paying for a product that I don't support. Things that are really often difficult in a large company, I could kind of pull together in a matter of minutes. So I it's very cool. And

And I mean, like I said, I'm not the expert. There's other people that are that are doing far more than me, but but it's it it definitely is a time saver.

Carter (07:26.494)
Your last role before Moody's was VP of client success at informative research. What did the customer success side teach you about selling?

Tiffany Stringfellow (07:36.437)
Yeah, I mean a lot, right? I think in and and if I look at kind of my career as a whole, I think every piece has taught me kind of a common theme, right? Like I've done everything from working on products that help clients secure their clients, like marketing tools, all the way through to servicing and capital markets. And I think what I try to focus on or at least start with as early as possible is that everything is workflow driven and that you really haven't sold anything.

If it doesn't fit into your specific workflow. And we can't, as salespeople, know that without really digesting a client's workflow. And so it's not a lot of like exciting parts of the job, but it's sitting down with somebody who understands operations. You don't need a team of people to sit down with you. But tell me about your process. What are you doing today? Are you asking for data in your appraisal that is being sourced somewhere that's unique, right? Are you looking for market data that

isn't traditionally in a field product. Is there an escalated review process or is there a credit policy change that maybe doesn't allow for this use case that we need to discuss? And so leading with that workflow mindset I think is what I've really taken away from my roles and I think serves me well in sales.

Carter (08:59.254)
Okay, so you're saying going very deep on the workflow to figure out if you guys and then taking that information and then selling your product to it to s if you guys fit into that?

Tiffany Stringfellow (09:06.815)
Yeah. Yeah, and it doesn't always fit, right? I mean I I've been doing this for twenty years. I've sold to the same people, right? So if it doesn't fit in your workflow, you know, there there really isn't a reason for me to like s put

Put this in front of somebody and kind of beat at it, right? Like it has to be the right fit for them. and that might mean that it's not the right fit right now, right? If your credit policy says I need a person standing on the lawn taking pictures of this property, that credit policy has to change before we can make this change. Now I haven't run into that, but you know, that's kind of an example of the type of detail you would need. unfortunately at Moody's it, most of it's something I can overcome. If it's a data asset, we have a ton of data. So I could probably

probably grab data from somewhere else internally, but I would really want to know that early on versus you know getting to the goal line of the contract and then finding out this is going to kill the deal.

Carter (10:02.636)
Yeah, and you had mentioned you've been in this space for twenty years selling to b basically the same people, so you have so much domain knowledge in this space. What do pure tech sellers get wrong about selling to lenders? That maybe somebody that is maybe an account executive or a salesperson, but they don't have that domain knowledge. Like what would they what would they get wrong?

Tiffany Stringfellow (10:22.557)
Yeah, I mean I think I I think if you don't work in our industry and you don't have that domain knowledge to your point, I think you could miss that we're workflow driven, we're risk driven, highly risk driven, and we're regulatory driven. And so if you're not hitting all of those areas before you've sat down and and I mean this from like a product development in many cases,

You're gonna have a really hard time selling into this space, right? If you don't understand a bank that's regulated by the OCC and how that's different than a credit union being regulated, you your product may not be possible to be consumed. and one thing I think that is key in my world from this APCR perspective is CAPE prior to Moody's acquisition laid the foundation with capital markets. Investors are a heavy driver of origination process and underwriting guidelines.

And so they went to the investors first. And they they didn't even know if they could sell it to the investors, right? Most of them are not buying it, they're just looking at it as an originator's review. But if they don't give the ability to use it, as much as we sell, these originators aren't going to be able to either. And so understanding the takeout, are they selling these? Are they holding these? Are they selling to Fannie? Are they selling to private investors? Like what does that look like? you've got to kind of fix that.

that before you you push the product, because the product could be great. And if the regulation doesn't work, then they can't use it.

Carter (11:57.097)
Yeah, that that makes a lot of sense. You've talked about ROI storytelling in your deals. What separates an ROI story that moves the deal forward from one that doesn't?

Tiffany Stringfellow (12:10.901)
I mean I I think we've probably all seen in sales like

I've start a new job and you get kind of your sales deck that has like, here's our boilerplate deck, and there's always a ROI slide. I think that's the first thing I'm gonna pull out. and I think I think that's probably not something my boss would love to hear me say, but I think what what really needs to happen at ROI is it's gotta be your ROI, right? I have to understand those questions that I've asked at the beginning. What's your driver, right? Is it sales cycle timeline? Is it pull-through? Is it what are what are you measuring and what's your company?

Measuring and then I need your data to do it right. And so I I may be having some ROI discussions, right? If I'm a quarter of the cost, there's ROI there. I don't need to explain that to you much more than that. but what's really meaningful is understanding what's your cycle time look like today. How do we condense that and how does that help your pull through, right? and so at Moody's that's often a proof of concept, which requires you to be kind of invested in what I'm selling. You need to send me data, I have a group of people that I

work with that are running the product and then pulling out examples and giving you back aggregated data so i'm not showing you an ROI slide I'm showing you ROI data and I think that's that's the story right like and it has to be what matters to you right if you have no objective to reduce cycle time and I'm beating that drum I'm probably you know falling on deaf ears.

Carter (13:38.252)
Yeah. That is pretty in depth. How long are the sales cycles in this?

Tiffany Stringfellow (13:42.867)
I mean it it varies by client, but I would say you're probably looking at six to twelve months. Obviously larger institutions are longer and a lot of that's you know hitting through compliance contracts, you know, they could go up to maybe eighteen. a smaller, you know, regional player maybe could move in about six, but but not short, right? I'm not gonna I'm not gonna get this deal done in a couple of weeks for sure.

Carter (14:07.872)
What's something that would kill a deal, let's say, month nine or near the end, that looks great in the beginning, like let's say at month three? And how do you avoid those things from happening?

Tiffany Stringfellow (14:18.323)
Yeah, I mean that's like the million dollar question, right? Like if we all had that answer, we would win every deal. But so it varies, but but I think, you know, it I and I spend a lot of time thinking about that as I I bet many salespeople do. I think that probably boils down to a couple things that I've seen. I think it's

Carter (14:23.447)
Yeah, right.

Tiffany Stringfellow (14:37.981)
Ignoring the things that are going to be a problem down the road. So one of those is always risk. I'm going to meet with risk at some point. I think as salespeople, we like the excitement. We want everybody bought off. And then those first three months, you've got your champion and everybody's nodding and smiling, and you've got a follow-up and you've got all of this to do. And you you tend to want to avoid some of those roadblocks. So I might think that I want to wait to discuss with risk. And the reality is you got to include that up front.

We've got to have that discussion early on, and your product needs to be able to be explainable to risk, right? Like there's no getting around that in banking, there just isn't. and I think if you're not engaging those people early on, and if you don't know who they are early on, what you end up with is your champion now fighting these battles down the road, and then the second problem is when those things happen.

Often we'd stop selling. It's like, we think we're good. We've got this green, you know, green light. We think we've got buy off. And then our champion gets a roadblock from compliance or risk. And we may not be engaged enough to know to help them fight that battle. And so now your champion is fighting these battles internally and getting roadblock after roadblock. And that's when things go silent, right? And and that dreaded like just checking in, how's it going? And then you get nothing back. And what you

Carter (16:02.849)
Yeah.

Tiffany Stringfellow (16:04.461)
Really don't know is what's happening on their side. And so if you have that context in the beginning, if I've talked to risk, if I've understood compliance, if I understand if they have a technical issue that I need to get my tech team involved in because maybe their system is very unique, they're not on a traditional LOS, something like that. all of those things up front need to happen, and then we got to close the loop by staying engaged, and that's not easy when you've kind of gone through your proof of concept and you've maybe got a contract in legal.

But just don't take your eye off the ball because we need to be there to support them. We're the experts in why we're compliant, right? Or why what at least to answer the questions, right? I don't know your compliance, but I know the product enough to help our meal. And I think that if we don't do that, that's when the deals kind of slip away.

Carter (16:56.3)
You know, I'm curious how do you stay engaged with them if you don't have a ton to tell them or be reaching out to them about?

Tiffany Stringfellow (17:03.487)
Yeah, it's a challenge, right? I I think you know, at Moody's, it's less of a challenge than it would have been at CAPE as a startup because we do have engagement probably in many places. So they're maybe buying other information for Moody's and they're a current client. So, so that's, you know, one way, right? I think if you're in a situation where you are at a startup and maybe you're only selling a single product, relationship has to help drive that in some capacity.

But also we could do we could do things like share information that we come across that you might find in informative that maybe is new regulation around their specific area that really doesn't have to do with my product. But you know, allowing that connection and then asking for touch points, right? Hopefully your champion is is willing to set up follow up calls. that's something that I learned out of customer success as well. Setting up some kind of regular, could we meet in a you know on a week?

weekly or monthly or whatever that whatever makes sense on that cadence. So that you're engaged enough and then ask them, you know, is what's going on? Like what are you running into Roblox, right? Not just check in and be like, hey, how's it going? Just checking in, right? Like add to value.

Carter (18:18.135)
Right.

All right, well I think we got some really good stuff here. I will end it here.

Tiffany Stringfellow (18:25.429)
Well, it was so great to meet you. Thank you.

Carter (18:28.633)
Yeah it was.